hello i made a footnote on another post about this but this is yet another problem i am having with retroarch. i believe i have everything set up correctly but when i launch a supported rom with nestopia i just get a black screen. any ideas how to get the actual game to work ? (it works fine with other emulators so i presume it is not the rom as it also detects in retroarch so one would presume it’s supported ?)
Does it work with another NES core? Do any other games with with the Nestopia core? Do any games work with any other core?
Make a text file in the same directory as retroarch.exe with the following line and save it as retroarch.bat, then run that batch file and reproduce the problem.
retroarch.exe -v --menu > output.log 2>&1
This will create an output.log text file with all the retroarch log messages in it. Then, open the newly-created output.log file in any text editor like Notepad and paste the contents on pastebin. Paste the link to your pastebin paste here. This will allow us to see what happened.
ok i will do this thanks mate in the meantime i used another emulator (not retroarch) as i had a deadline for a video but i really want to get retroarch working so i will do this today when i have a moment thanks mate !
okay here is my pastebin file. i think it might be something to do with shaders but with the ass backwards menu system i can’t find anywhere to actually implement them so who knows… :-/
All and any help much appreciated as usual, i’ll get there eventually !
There were no errors in your log and no shaders are loaded. You could try going to settings > driver and change your video driver to d3d instead of gl.
There’s no reason for being a dick. Please correct your attitude if you expect continued help.
i tried changing that setting already mate but i just got a “retroarch has stopped working” error and a return to desktop/crash :-/
i will try some other roms now.
the menu system is a little labyrinthine though mate i appreciate it will be excellent if the program is working BUT when it’s not it merely presents a plethora of potential things to tinker with that would, most likely for most users, serve to only make things worse :-o
ok, well, i got another rom actually working so maybe for some reason the nestopia build i have is incompatible with a rom that works on all other emulators ? strange. now, how do i get rid of these terrible vsync issues ? i thought this emulator was meant to remove such things ? strange. Are there individual settings for each emulator ? i would like to turn vsync off and to make the image a lot sharper if possible (turn off the ghosting/smoothing around the pixels that are obviously some kind of default crt emulation)
Any ideas, anyone ?
ok well i think i have figured that all out by just generally messing with things which i suppose is what one is supposed to do with this emulator although i am still getting bad screen tearing. i am running a gtx970 and an i7 processor so i don’t think speed is a problem can anyone suggest how to get rid of this screen tearing as the supposed lack of it was one of the main reasons i installed this software. all help much appreciated !
You need vsync to avoid tearing. Make sure it’s on in settings > video. Turn on GPU Hard Sync 0 to minimize latency with vsync on. You might need to turn off audio sync in settings > audio if you’re getting stuttering (i.e., occasional frame dupe).
btw, I tried that same ROM here and it’s working fine, so something’s up on your end. My working MD5sum is: 86382cfada9d12b339b1db8e5bbff026
strange, it’s a clean install and if the rom works for you then that’s very odd ! i will try those latency/vsync tricks. vsync is already on but i don’t think hard sync is, i will try that now and the audio sync too, thanks !
also, when i deselect “threaded video” about 80% of the time retroarch crashes to desktop and i have no idea why.
nope, now it’s crashing 100% of the time on that option. amazing.
and now the moving framerate counter in “video” says nothing, too, “n/a” as if it is not detecting my video card. this is getting a bit ridiculous now i may just have to admit defeat !
and now it’s crashing when i try to launch any game. this is just taking too much time now, it was working fine aside from the tearing now it’s not working at all. i don’t know, people would say this is user error but this should be a simple task i just want to play a game without so much hassle. i don’t call fighting with an emulator for about 3 hours a “game” 
now it seems to be generating config files on its own, instead of one to load i now have three. i just don’t understand this thing, it needs its own wiki so i don’t have to bother good people such as yourselves. i know a lot of people who have tried this system and abandoned it in frustration and i can see why. also i am still getting screen tearing after trying all the options set above. i read that this emulator eliminated that problem which was basically my main reason for running it. it is a shame but i dont have a phd in linux and am not familiar with this platform or its options (most of which seem to either crash it or make zero difference) so i don’t really know what else i can do
also, why is it that when i load a configuration it pops up my desktop windows over the system itself and i have to mouse click it to refocus ? that is just appalling implementation of a system.
it sounds like you’ve turned on per-core configs. that’s pretty much the only option that makes more config files. You might be better off just sticking with standalone Nestopia if you just want to play some NES games.
If you’d like to continue trying RetroArch, it sounds like you might want to start over. Here’s a beginner’s document that might help: http://www.libretro.com/index.php/getting-started-with-retroarch/
yes mate i might have turned that on i went a bit wild ! i might start over some time but i am quite disappointed by the performance if i’m being honest and i think i will stick to my real famicom and nes systems for the time being until i can face stepping back into the frustrating fire once again !